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NASA In Colbert Conundrum Over Space Station
After Stephen Colbert won the vote in NASA's contest to name a new module on the International Space Station, NASA found itself in a tough spot. According to Reuters, "Contest rules stipulate that the agency retains the right to basically do whatever it wants," but it may not be all that easy. At first NASA floated the idea of naming the new module's toilet "Colbert." But Last Thursday Congressman Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., urged the agency to respect the people's wishes. And Colbert turned up the heat on yesterday's weekly show: "So NASA, I urge you to heed Congressman Fattah's call for democracy in orbit. Either name that node after me, or I too will reject democracy and seize power as space's evil tyrant overlord. Ball's in your court."
Something similar happened in The Netherlands, although on a smaller scale. Some company ran a contest to name a new type of potato chips (en-uk crisps) and internetters voted en masse for the name "WithoutStyle", after the similarly named blog. In the end, the company bended to the pressure, although for a short time only.
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Colbert saved the African elephant from extinction. He did this by virtue of his theory that whatever happens to be on wikipedia represents the truth. He urged his viewers to vandalize the wiki entry for elephants to say that the elephant population had tripled over the last 6 month, so that once it was vandalized it would now be the truth and the elephants would be saved. Here is park of the history of the page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elephant&offset=20060801170519&limit=500&action=history
Actually, he didn't get it named after him. Some country (Hungary, I think) had a contest to name a bridge. Colbert urged viewers to spam the contest with his name, and he won. However, they said they would only use his name if:
1) he could demonstrate he was fluent in Hungarian, and
2) he was dead.
The civil war was about slavery and Lincoln's election, as an abolitionist Republican, arguably precipitated it even before he was sworn in, just like Obama's reputation as a liberal took the market for a nosedive.
For proof:
a) the confederate constitution is a copy of the us constitution, but, with a clause adding that slavery is a natural right and the government cannot ban slavery.
b) the most contentious issue between north and the south, was, in fact slavery. It existed with the infamous compromise in the original constitutional convention, with a series of incidents running all along the 1800's leading up to the civil war - bleeding kansas, dredd scott, the compromises.
c) abolition was the animating social issues of the day.
It's true that there were other issues. The south, being agrarian, favored free trade so they could buy cheaper British manufactured goods. The north was protectionist, and the south saw this as a sort of blackmail. As it is, the north became an economic powerhouse and won the war BECAUSE of its protectionism. This debate continues to this day. Right now the southern and agrarian ideas of free trade carry the day but the thing is, any study of history shows that free trade and a lack of workers rights makes you lose wars. Just ask the south.
But really, the civil war was about slavery.
This is my sig.
Might have something to do with that being against the law.
Not that it would have done any good either way, as any funds raised that way go into a general fund and are doled back out by Congress. (Which is a feature, not a bug. It's designed to prevent federal agencies from circumventing the budget or selling off federal resources for personal or agency gain.)